Cougar Magic

by Terry Spear

  Nina smiled and opened the door to the first of the hotel rooms and went inside. She didn’t smell any sign of her sister or anyone else who had recently come here.

  Stryker looked under the bed, then stood. “We finished having fun playing school and headed over to the tavern where we pretended to be real gunslingers sitting down for a drink and a card game. We had the beers and the cards and played poker for real, we just weren't wearing the pistols.”

  She chuckled and left the room to check out the next one. “Sounds like you were having fun.”

  “We were. When all of us guys got together, we always did. We weren’t into mischief, just into having a good time.”

  “So who proposed to have the séance?”

  “Chase. He wanted to speak to his deceased parents. We’d had a few beers and hot dogs by then and we were all agreeable. He said that his grandmother did a séance once so he could speak to his parents, but nothing happened.”

  Nina stopped at the second door, unable to go on, wanting to hear what happened next.

  “Well, none of us thought we’d conjure up anything, not even in a ghost town where the lightning was crashing all over, thunder booming overhead, and the rain pouring down in buckets. We had found some candles and lighted them in lanterns we found under the bar. It looked spooky enough already in the old western tavern and I could just imagine what it would have been like had we lived back then—a player piano playing, or some guy beating on the keys, playing a tune. People laughing and talking, guys playing card games, others drinking. Yeah, I could just envision the whole thing when Chase had us all hold hands and he began to say the words that his grandmother had said. Celtic words in the old language.”

  Stryker moved Nina along to the next door and he opened it, peered in, and it looked clear. Then they both checked it over inside.

  “So here we were all sitting, holding hands, feeling the ambience, the stormy weather, the ghostliness of the place, and I started seeing things for real. A bartender serving up drinks, slamming the glasses on the counter, no dust, no cobwebs, the place filled with patrons. Rowdy miners, rowdy gunslingers armed to the teeth. Women in long dresses, yet their breasts were practically on display.”

  Watching Stryker, Nina thought it was if he was reliving the whole scene all over again. She listened quietly, dying to know what else he’d seen. Wait, if all these people were in the tavern, then all of them had to have died.

  “No one approached us, though the bartender looked curiously at me as if he realized I could see him when no one who wasn’t a ghost could. And then one of the scantily-clad women sauntered over, smiling at us, but then she frowned at me.”

  “She realized you saw her.”

  “That’s what I gathered. The other guys, Hal, Chase, and Dan, were just sitting there, waiting for something to happen. They weren’t looking around the room at everyone like I was. At first, I thought they had to see what I was seeing. Or else I had too much to drink and I was hallucinating. But that had never happened when I only had a couple of beers.”

  “Did you interact with anyone? The ghosts, I mean.”

  “I hesitated. I mean, how would it look if I began talking to someone of a ghostly nature as if I were talking to one of my friends? They would have thought I was nuts.”

  “But you were there for a séance, so Chase thought someone might have contact with his parents. Most likely him. Still, it appears you’re the one who is sensitive.”

  He smiled. “Thank you.”

  She chuckled and hauled him to the next room. “Concerning having some psychic abilities.”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t help myself. Three of the gunslingers approached me and asked what we were doing in there. I couldn’t very well ignore them. Man, were they ornery-looking cusses. Bearded, beady eyes, leathery skin from being out in the sun so much. One was a bit bow-legged, and all were packing pistols.”

  “Not that they could do anything to you.”

  “No, but they looked so real, just as real as you are standing next to me, that it crossed my mind.”

  “But they acknowledged you. Which means, if you had a séance, maybe you could learn something about the shooter or my sister.”

  They checked out the next room. No one, no smells that indicated anyone had been here in a long time.

  “Okay, though I don’t know that they, the ghosts, if they appear to me, could help with anything, but we could try it. They might not even appear to me again.”

  “True. So what happened? I take it you began talking to them. How did the other guys take it?”

  “Yeah, I began talking to the gunslingers. I asked them how they died. As soon as I began to speak, my friends all turned to look at me. Of course, I was talking to the ghosts, but they didn’t see anyone, so it looked like I was just talking to myself out loud. The gunslingers asked how I thought they had died.”

  “’Shootout?’ I had asked.

  “’Yeah, between the deputy sheriff and the sheriff and my men,’ the one gunslinger said. Two men were hanged for stealing silver, one was shot during a card game for cheating, others died of natural causes, or due to the diseases of the time. Influenza hit a few. They’d all gathered around to speak to me, curious about why I could hear and see them.”

  “Did they want to move on? And leave this place?” she asked, not imagining how that would be, to be stuck in a ghost town like this forever. Then again, they had plenty of company.

  “Not that any of them said. It seemed as though they were continuing to live their lives in the way they had in the past, drinking, gambling, womanizing.”

  Travis, Bridget, and Chase came upstairs and helped them finish looking through the rooms.

  Chase said, “So we’re going to do another séance?” He sounded both amused and interested.

  “Yeah,” Stryker said.

  “Okay, I wonder if my parents won’t show up here. Maybe we need to do it closer to home,” Chase said.

  "That could be. Maybe where they died in the car accident on the icy mountain road," Stryker said.

  “Yeah, let’s do that on New Year’s Eve, when they died.”

  Stryker was thinking about the New Year’s Eve party they were having at the Watering Hole in Yuma Town, live band, the ball dropping in New York City on the big screen, champagne and other drinks for everyone. All the couples with kids who were going to be there had sitters for until about two in the morning. He guessed they could go after the new year was rung in. He sure hoped Nina would still be here and this situation was resolved with her sister and that she’d come as his date to the New Year’s Eve party.

  “Did you guys believe Stryker was seeing the ghosts that first time?” Nina asked, pulling him out of his thoughts of dancing and partying with her. Hell, he was never this distracted from doing his duty, normally.

  “Hell no,” Chase said as they all headed back downstairs. “We figured Stryker was pulling our leg when he began talking to ghosts. Just acting as though he was seeing all these people. Though when he jumped out of the chair and nearly fell, we thought something really was going on. He turned white as a sheet and his chair clattered to the floor. He was holding his stomach and glanced down at it as if he’d suddenly been shot or something. Hell, we even thought he might have had an appendicitis attack or something he was so shaken.”

  “What happened?” Nina asked Stryker, sounding surprised.

  “One of the gunslingers pulled a knife on me and stabbed at me. Hell, it looked so real, I knew I was a gonner. I leapt out of the path of the wicked blade, but it went right through me.”

  “Yeah and Stryker's heart was racing, and he smelled of fear, so we knew at that point he wasn’t making any of it up,” Chase said. “I felt bad that I had been the one to suggest the séance, but he assured me he was fine and was glad to see what had happened because he’d never known he could see ghosts before that.”

  Nina and the others sat down on some of the old dusty furniture in the lobby and they hear
d several footfalls crunching in the snow as they approached the hotel. They all rose from their seats, guns ready, but Dan, Hal, and Leyton entered the hotel and they all relaxed.

  Dan said, “The other men are running as cougars, trying to locate the guy, but we think he drove off in a vehicle on the other side of the cliffs. Did you check out all the buildings?”

  “Three of them, but we’re going to have a séance,” Stryker said.

  Leyton frowned at his brother, but Dan and Hal smiled.

  “Okay, I’m in,” Dan said. “I don’t think any of us have ever seen you that spooked before.”

  Hal agreed. “Do your magic,” he told Chase.

  Leyton was frowning. “Are you all serious?” He sounded like he couldn’t believe them and Nina was surprised he didn’t seem to know Stryker had a connection with spirits.

  “Yeah, didn’t Stryker tell you? He can talk to ghosts,” Dan said. “Grab a seat. So I take it we’re doing it to learn about whoever has been through here recently, that is actually living?”

  “That’s the gist of it,” Stryker said, and they all took seats, and then they held hands and Chase spoke the Celtic words to call the spirits forth.

  Leyton looked like he wasn't willing to play the game, but he did so just because everyone else was.

  Nina had never been involved in a séance before, so she didn’t know what to expect, but when Stryker squeezed her hand and was looking toward the check-in counter, she suspected he was seeing someone that no one else could.

  “We’re searching for a woman who looks like this one,” Stryker said, raising Nina’s hand.

  This was so bizarre.

  “And a man who’s trying to kill her,” Stryker said.

  "Ah, hell," Leyton said.

  Everyone glanced at him, and he was looking in the same direction as the ghost must be standing. Nina was amazed. Both brothers must have the ability. She wondered about her sister, and why she didn't have future vision too like Nina did. Unless Ava had been hiding the fact that she did.

  Ava better not have after all the grief she'd given Nina while growing up.

  10

  Stryker asked the ghostly hotel manager standing behind the check-in counter again, “Did you see a man or woman come in here recently, dressed similarly to us?”

  The hotel manager just shook his head. "If any of your kind came in here dressed in the kind of duds you're wearing, I didn't see them. I'm not always at the front desk though. I might have stepped out to the outhouse out back."

  "He says he hasn't seen them," Leyton said, looking a bit rattled. "Hell." He pulled his hands away from Dan and Bridget's and rose from the couch.

  The others followed suit and Stryker asked, "Are you okay, old man?"

  Leyton snorted and headed out of the hotel.

  Everyone followed him out, Chase saying, "We need to try the saloon then. We know Ava slept there. And that's where you saw all kinds of ghosts before, Stryker."

  "Yeah, maybe we can make some headway there," Stryker said, glancing at his brother. He was as surprised as Leyton to learn he had the gift, but Leyton really didn't look happy about it. As a teen, Stryker thought it was cool. But he could understand how Leyton felt shocked about it too.

  "Hell, Kate might have never agreed to mate with me if she'd known," Leyton said, frowning at Stryker.

  "No way. She would have mated you no matter what baggage you carry around with you." Stryker smiled, then led the way into the saloon. He figured they'd sit at one of the tables, but it was already filled with people. Ghosts, rather. "Looks like the Chase's séance brought all the ghosts out in town. They're already here."

  He watched as some of the fancy ladies plied their charms on many of the men who looked to have some money to spend on them and were more than willing to leave with them.

  Some of the men glanced at Stryker, but Leyton was wide-eyed, watching everything that was going on around them.

  One of the gunslingers said, "Well, I'll be damned. Look who's returned. We thought you'd died and left this place already."

  They glanced around at the other people in their party and the one gunslinger raised his brows at Leyton. "Your brother? Looks like he can see us too."

  Stryker was kind of surprised that the ghosts would recognize him from so long ago when he was just a teen.

  "I've come to ask if any of you have seen a woman who looks like her," Stryker said, motioning to Nina.

  "Sleeping on the floor over there," one of the women said, pointing in the direction where the dust had been disturbed. "If she wants to work here, she needs to get a room."

  "How long ago was she here?" Stryker asked.

  "As far as I recall, I was hanged yesterday," one of the hanged men said.

  "I wouldn’t know," one of the gunmen said.

  "Me either," another man said, "but it appears she's standing right next to you."

  "This is her twin sister. Okay, so I gather that the passage of time means nothing to you. Got it. What about a man who was alone and carrying a gun?" Stryker asked.

  "He was wearing a beard and a hood," Nina said.

  "She can't see us," one of the gunslingers said.

  "No. Did you see the man in question?" Stryker asked.

  "Yeah, he went after her," the same gunslinger said, pointing to Nina. "Weren't none of my business, but I'd say he had dark purposes in mind."

  "He's here to kill her sister," Stryker said.

  "Yeah, and she looks just like her and he was after her for the same sinister reason, I'd venture to say. We never leave this place, nothing out there for us, so we wouldn't know where they went."

  "Thanks." Stryker was afraid of just that, but what did he know? For whatever reason, they must be stuck here then for all eternity.

  "Good seeing you again. Looks like you became one of us," the gunslinger said, pointing to Stryker's sidearm. “Got your own gang, your brother’s riding with you, your own women are packing, hell of a deal.”

  Hardly. Stryker and the others were on the right side of the law, but he wasn't about to contradict the man in case speaking to them later proved useful.

  Leyton was smiling darkly at the gunslinger. Surprising Stryker, Leyton asked the gunslinger, "How did you get stuck here?"

  The man eyed Leyton, then gave him kind of a sneer. "Doing what I do best. You know there's always some other guy trying to prove he's a faster draw than me, so I let him have it."

  One of the other gunslingers patted his gun. "Yeah, I'm the one who tried to outdraw him. I’d heard about him for eons, and I knew I could outgun him."

  "But you are here with the rest of the people at the saloon," Leyton said to the gunslinger who claimed to be the faster draw.

  "Yeah, well, one of the deputies got me."

  Leyton smiled.

  Stryker noticed there were no lawmen in the saloon, so he guessed none of them had died in here.

  "And the rest of you?" Leyton asked.

  "Yellow fever," several said.

  "Cholera outbreak," some said.

  "Gunfight," a couple said.

  "I got caught in the crossfire," the bartender said. “Hell of a lousy way to go.”

  When everyone had explained how they had died, Stryker said, "Thanks for all the help." Then he told everyone in their party what the ghosts had said to him and Leyton, then they left the saloon to continue to search the rest of the buildings in town. "Did you check the house near the town?" Stryker asked Dan.

  "No. We can do that on the way out of town," Dan said.

  “My brother didn’t tell you the best part of what one of the gunslinger ghosts thought,” Leyton said, as they headed for the next building.

  “Oh?” Chase asked.

  “Yeah, we’re part of his gang.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Even us women?” Bridget asked, sounding a little surprised.

  “Yeah, that was the best part. We take our women with us and you’re packing like we are.” Leyton smiled
at Bridget and Nina.

  “Yeah, and we’re damn good shots too,” Nina said. “I just wished I’d had my gun with me when I was carrying the skunks here. And then no one would have to be out here searching for the shooter. But I really didn’t think I’d have any trouble in a ghost town.”

  They saw some of the men returning from the search for the shooter up in the cliffs. They were now in their human forms and dressed. “He must have left in a vehicle,” Rick Mueller said.

  Nina tensed when she saw Rick, and Stryker suspected he’d give her a hard time for not being prepared for the shooter after he had trained her better at the Academy.

  Rick just smiled at her and gave her a hug. “Good to see you, Nina. Glad you made it through all these years.”

  “Thanks,” she said and took a deep breath.

  “All right. Then we concentrate on the rest of the buildings in Anderson for any clues to Nina’s sister’s whereabouts,” Dan said.

  Stryker knew Dan didn’t want to say he suspected she might be dead, not with Nina present.

  When they finished looking over the buildings and found three others that Ava had been in, but no sign of her now, they headed to the mine.

  “At least Pine Ridge Gold Mine near Hal’s place is shut down permanently,” Leyton said, “after he and Travis had had a shootout there and the rogue cougars had tried to seal them in the mine. Tracey and one of Hal’s ranch hands had been pinned down there during a shootout with the same men. Too bad we can't seal off this mine like we did the other, but the property owners won't agree to it."

  “How awful,” Nina said. “It sounds like this place is as wild now as it was during the time when the old western town was thriving.”

  “Well, a few of our cougars have brought trouble with them to Yuma Town,” Chase said. “My mate was on the run.”

  “And Tracey found trouble here at the mine,” Hal said. “When I’m not acting in the capacity of part-time deputy sheriff, or running things at the ranch, Tracey and I are with the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife Services. We go after wildlife traffickers and the like.”